The Lamentations of the Disgraced
by Hotel-Japanifornia
Summary: Originally on PWKM, filled for a prompt that goes as follows: "I'd love some really heartbreaking Misty angst where she visits Mia's grave and has a complete breakdown over the fact her eldest daughter died and her youngest nearly got falsely arrested for her murder."


Misty seldom visited cemeteries; since she left her old life behind as well as the people she was closest to, there was never any need to visit them. Today, however, was different as one of Misty's children was murdered at the beginning of the month. Her face was grim as she walked through the gates to the cemetery and her hood was pulled up all the way so that nobody would recognize her. She passed through the multiple rows of graves before arriving at one grave that seemed to be newly placed. _ Her daughter's grave. _

She knelt down in front of the grave and stared at it silently as she read each letter of what was inscribed. As she took the words in, tears began to roll down her cheeks before she finally broke down. She could not believe what was written on the tombstone. After all, how could her own daughter be dead?

Teardrops spilled onto the ground rapidly as she thought of Mia. 15 years had passed since Misty talked to her children but when she read about Mia's murder in the newspaper just a few weeks ago, she felt as if someone stabbed her and proceeded to cut her wide open. Her body shook heavily as she sobbed while reminiscing about Mia: giving birth to her, her first words, teaching her how to walk, everything. She felt awful about abandoning her daughters and most importantly, not being able to protect Mia when she needed help most.

And then, there was her other daughter, Maya. When Misty read that Maya was arrested for Mia's murder, Misty felt her brain go numb and her body shut down from shock. She couldn't fathom how her little Maya, who followed Mia around Kurain Village like a little puppy dog and who _ absolutely adored her big sister, _ could possibly murder Mia. Misty wanted to visit Maya when she was in prison; she wanted to ask her why, _ how did it come to this? _But she couldn't, she didn't feel brave enough to confront Maya.

Luckily, Maya didn't murder her sister as it turned out that Mia was actually killed by a man named "Redd White". Misty could only feel a tiny bit of relief at knowing that Maya was not a killer as even that knowledge could not fill in the huge gap in her heart that was created by losing Mia. Although she didn't know who Redd was nor had she ever heard of him before, hearing his name and seeing that smug look on his face in the paper created a sense of fury inside Misty's heart.

She was angry at him for murdering Mia.

She was also angry at him for framing Maya for that same murder which nearly led her to rotting in prison for the rest of her life.

She grasped the ground below her fiercely as she thought about him. She dug her fingers in so deep that she could feel the dirt slipping underneath her fingernails. Misty left the village years earlier because she felt she had disgraced the Fey clan. She only wanted to protect her daughters from experiencing that same humiliation she felt upon being considered a fraud by the country. _ Yet, she couldn't even succeed at that much _. After all, it was because of her leaving that Mia had been killed and Maya was nearly convicted of murder.

She grasped for her talisman with one of her dirty hands as she continued to sob and opened it up. She carefully put her fingers in and pulled out a photo. She unraveled it and gazed at it with tears in her eyes. It was an old photo of her daughters taken 15 years ago, shortly before_ that incident _ had occurred. Teardrops spilled on the photo causing it to get a little wet but gazing at it managed to calm her down.

She looked at the photo for what felt like hours before she looked up at the tombstone. Although Mia was dead, Misty could still protect and keep Maya safe. She made a silent vow then to protect Maya no matter what, regardless if the cost would be her own life. It was one that she would internalize for the rest of her life and it was the reason why she would later agree to a mysterious, coffee-drinking masked man's plan to save her daughter from Dahlia Hawthorne.


End file.
